Order of Victims' Names on Memorial Turns Out to Be Not Quite Settled

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Published: March 30, 2006

One of the most potentially divisive issues at ground zero -- how victims' names are arranged on the memorial walls -- was settled two years ago, when the governor and mayor said they would be listed in random order, with insignias of service next to the names of uniformed emergency workers. Period.

But nothing about the World Trade Center site ever seems completely settled.

Firefighters and police officers never liked the random concept, union officials said, believing that their mission of running into the buildings while others fled entitled them to special recognition. A group of victims' relatives proposed that names be listed by association (employees of Cantor Fitzgerald or Aon, for example) in the space corresponding to the tower where they died. The architect who won the design competition, Michael Arad, originally spoke of creating ''meaningful adjacencies'' that would, for instance, permit siblings to be listed side by side.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation long maintained that this discussion was over. Yesterday, however, Stefan Pryor, the corporation president, and Thomas H. Rog? a board member of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, told a City Council committee that renewed discussions about the arrangement of names were in fact still going on.

''L.M.D.C.'s ears remain open,'' Mr. Pryor said. ''We are always open to further solutions, suggestions. And we've had meetings on this topic quite recently.''

He said that random arrangement remained the plan and said that any alternative would have to conform to the overall memorial design.

Pressed by Councilman Alan J. Gerson of Lower Manhattan to articulate the corporation's position on the names, Mr. Pryor said, ''The current position of the L.M.D.C. is to support Michael Arad's position.'' Mr. Arad, who did not testify yesterday, said in 2004, ''The haphazard brutality of the attacks is reflected in the arrangement of names and no attempt is made to impose order upon this suffering.''

At yesterday's hearing, Mr. Rog? whose 24-year-old daughter, Jean, was a flight attendant aboard the American Airlines jetliner that crashed into the north tower, said, ''The random suggestion contained within the current design may have some artistic elegance about it, but it certainly is flawed in many respects.''

During the daylong hearing, Gretchen Dykstra, the president and chief executive of the memorial foundation, allowed that the $500 million estimated cost of building the memorial and accompanying museum did not include reinforcing the slurry wall on the west side of the original World Trade Center basement. The display of this 70-foot-high artifact is to be the centerpiece of the largest exhibition hall. And it will cost at least $25 million, she said.

Ms. Dykstra also said that the operating cost for the memorial, the museum, the landscaped plaza and a visitors' orientation and education center would be ''north of $40 million a year.'' That was one reason, she told Mr. Gerson, that she would recommend that there be a charge to enter the museum, with free admission for victims' relatives and emergency workers who survived 9/11. (There would be no admission charge for the memorial itself.) Mr. Gerson said earlier that he would be ''aghast if there were to be any charge for entrance.'' The Council has no authority over ground zero, but Mr. Gerson called the hearing as a kind of forum on the memorial.

As expected, safety concerns were among the issues that he raised. For example, he questioned whether there ought to be four L-shaped ramps at the memorial, as Mr. Arad originally proposed, or two switchback ramps, as is now planned.

The councilman invited Jake Pauls of Silver Spring, Md., a consultant in building codes and public safety who serves as a technical adviser to the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, run by two relatives of 9/11 victims. The campaign has been critical of the memorial plans.

Mr. Pryor said earlier that the exit stairs would have the capacity to handle four times as many people as would ever be expected at any moment in the memorial.

But Mr. Pauls said officials were ''playing games'' with the numbers. He also took issue with the design of the emergency exits at the main level of the memorial, six of which would be behind corner doors in the galleries, leading to fire-protected, blast-hardened, pressurized stairwells and corridors.

''If the exit is not used normally, you can just kiss it off in an emergency,'' Mr. Pauls said. ''People won't know about it. The authorities won't know how to deal with it. And how do you redirect people from a normally used path which they want to use to a distant, well-hidden but relatively safe, narrower, longer, more arduous route by stairs?''

Confronted with that choice, he said, visitors will respond: ''There's no way I want to use those stairs. I want to use the ramps.''